Posts by TerryWalstrom

23

And now for something you might be able to hear without repulsion

by TerryWalstrom in

i won't give a long preamble other than to say this.

listen and see how you respond.

and now i'm passing it along to get your feedback.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28i3lwxw5xs.

TerryWalstrom

We are not allowed by nature to think unthinkable thoughts.
We cannot bear the unbearable without disintegration.
We will fracture.

Cognitive protection mechanisms kick in--as a natural safeguard.

What we NEED is an ability to moderate our mood and alter our consciousness in times of stress.

The more intelligent and intellectual the person, the more 'high-falutin'
the mechanism of moderation there is.

Stupid people give stupid reasons. Smart people give smart reasons.
What is REAL vs. what is "real" is not really the focus of Peterson's discourse (at least, as I see it.)

He has, to use a weird analogy, opened up his skull and has pulled out his brain in order to see how it works.
This is not possible, of course.
By analogy and deconstruction, it is modeled as real.

I like Peterson's process. I'm not so much interested in his final analysis belief system.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Y17YaZRRvY

What you hide from yourself comes back to haunt you (Cognitive Dissonance)

by TerryWalstrom in

i was paroled in 1969. i had been in prison since 1967. i was a political prisoner compelled by my religion to refuse military service.. (in order to preserve my faith, i could only change my thoughts.i couldn't change what happened.

i could only change how i remembered what happened, how i reported what happened.

)____________________the first rule of sanity.

TerryWalstrom

I was paroled in 1969. I had been in prison since 1967.
I was a political prisoner compelled by my religion to refuse Military Service.

(In order to preserve my Faith, I could only change my thoughts.
I couldn't change what happened. I could only change how I remembered what happened, how I reported what happened.)
____________________
THE FIRST RULE OF SANITY

Each of us carries our world inside our head and it has been built a day at a time, a thought at a time.
This "world-building" more or less matches the real, objective world outside our head.

Except...Not perfectly.
There's a really good reason for that.
You'd go mad if the two matched exactly.
____

Thinking is NOT always an honest process.
No. No. No.
Between the horror and the human being is THE WALL.

Each of us has a circuit-breaker
for unbearable thoughts protecting us from severe trauma
triggered at the unbearable moment.

What does this mean?

The first rule of Sanity:
"The unthinkable must NOT be thought."

Denial
If you can't bear a thought--you say, "No! I refuse to believe it".
This is the circuit breaker shutting down.

Lies
A child confronted with a misdeed--rather than facing punishment--will LIE. It isn't sophisticated; it is NATURE; avoiding pain.
Lying is the act of hiding reality from others while Denial is the act of hiding reality from your Self.
___

Our Mind cannot operate without data.
Survival often demands we corrupt that data.

Sanity is the perfect balance between "thinkable" and the
unthinkable thoughts.

Question:

What person do you know who does not "moderate their mood" by some kind of pill or consciousness-altering substance either legal or illegal?

The horror must be avoided at any cost!

______

In prison, at the age of 20, my Faith assured me I could not and would not ever be outside the full protection of my God. This was an unshakeable belief.
Then, the horror.
I was assaulted.

My FAITH was betrayed by reality.

This was unthinkable.
My circuit breaker shut me down.
Denial. Then Lies.

The lie: it was an "attempted" assault.

In order to preserve my Faith, I could only change my thoughts.
I couldn't change what happened. I could only change how I remembered what happened, how I reported what happened.

Otherwise, there would be consequences unbearable to me and to the "world" I built and lived inside.

I would lose my Faith, self-respect, my Brothers and Sisters, my Purpose, my self-respect and--perhaps, worst of all:
"the only True Religion" might not be true.
So...

Denial. Lies.

With this "COGNITIVE DISSONANCE" I saved the world! (My world)

With an imbalance of the mind, comes the great cost. Sanity.

I had suffered a trauma. Lying about the severity of it was like taking an aspirin for a bullet wound.

I began to unhinge. I split into two people.
Like many JW's, I began to live a Double Life.

Terry #1 was a devout Jehovah's Witness devoting 100 hours each month to the ministry and serving in the local congregation as a shining example of what a young man should be.
Terry #2 was an embittered, angry young man filled with rage and desperate to escape my fake world.
___

I was paroled in 1969. I had been in prison since 1967.
The Me I had become was on a collision course with disaster.

I lasted 5 years in a slow, crumbling disintegration of a person conflicted by every thought, value, and feeling. I was in a war with my Self.

Fight or Flight?

I fled.

Here is what haunts me.
Millions of JW's remain behind. What if I had done that? Would I dissolve into a robotic "True Believer" like all those people I still know today?

I took my wife and 3 children with me. I didn't abandon them.
I couldn't.
Many men do just that very thing: A Clean Break.

My father did that. I suffered a miserable childhood.
How could I do the same?
I could not.
_______

Millions of Jehovah's Witnesses face Cognitive Dissonant thoughts every day.
They reconcile Reality with Faith in the Organization.

The Horror is unthinkable: "I am in a cult."

Those of us who speak out are branded Apostates who must not be allowed to speak. The JW must never listen.

What price do they pay?

Sanity?
____

I think the worst Cognitive Dissonance is at the top of the Organization inside the mind and mindset of the Governing Body.
Each and every villain since time began believes he is good.
Where is their Sanity?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Y17YaZRRvY

23

And now for something you might be able to hear without repulsion

by TerryWalstrom in

i won't give a long preamble other than to say this.

listen and see how you respond.

and now i'm passing it along to get your feedback.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28i3lwxw5xs.

TerryWalstrom

23

And now for something you might be able to hear without repulsion

by TerryWalstrom in

i won't give a long preamble other than to say this.

listen and see how you respond.

and now i'm passing it along to get your feedback.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28i3lwxw5xs.

TerryWalstrom

I won't give a long preamble other than to say this. Listen and see how you respond. I did. And now I'm passing it along to get your feedback.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28i3lWxW5xs

2

The Snake and the Cult

by TerryWalstrom in

jw
friends

this is what happens in cults!all opposition is silenced, forbidden and punished.a cult never makes any true progress.they are rooted, fixed, immobile.watch a snake going from point a to point b.the snake never ever moves in a straight line.a snake curves to the left and curves back to the rightand yet it makes progress from point a to point b.. what is progress in society?moving forward, not backward.

right?improving your chances within an environment.achieve advantages, advancing all the while.okay?we can agree that progress is good.

but wait!.

TerryWalstrom

The idea of a HOLY CITY is intensely interesting.
The 3 main monotheistic religions agree only on that one concept.
Islam, Judaism, Christianity cry "YES!"
They agree the Holy City exists and further agree where that city is.
JERUSALEM.

Ah--but--the crisis comes immediately when these 3 remarkable religious mindsets cram into such tiny real estate.
What is the CLASH of civilizations but being forced to CONFRONT reality itself?

If there is only ONE GOD--and that one God is feasibly THERE in the agreed upon HOLY CITY--how is it possible for people determined devoutly to worship that one God to CLASH?

Here, I think, human psychology presents a possible insight to answer.

Confronting reality with religion and belief with counter-belief is an extraordinary opportunity to TEST faith against FALSIFIABLE facts.

When Jehovah's Witnesses faced 1914, 1925, and 1975 confronting

FAILURE with BELIEF, what happened?
Was there enlightenment?
Hell no.
There were simultaneously 2 eventualities.

1. Double-down in cognitive-dissonance
2. Apostasy (getting the hell away from cult belief)

Disproof can only be accepted with enlightenment or rejected with irrational Faith.

The Holy City concept is a deep, psychological longing for some imagined world government ruled by the One True God.
Christianity, Islam, and Judaism confront the UNreality of their deep Faith when they confront each other.

1. Double-down and label those other true-believers as Satan.
2. Secularize and offer political solutions for pragmatic co-existence.

Enemies everywhere!
Who creates these enemies? Those who label the others, not those

willing to sit down and craft political solutions.

CLOSED MINDS are destroying civilization.
Creating labels, decrying bigots, Us vs. Them thinking is poisoning our world.

The way to identify the Bigot?
It is easy: those who call others "Bigot."
Those who shut you down, block your access to open dialogue and
label you with propaganda from a position of moral superiority
are gatekeepers drowning dissent, demonizing apostasy, and worst of all: DENYING themselves the voice of criticisms crucial to creating
progress in their society.

The Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses actually imagine
themselves to BE the center of the Holy City.
The child molestation problem is a symptom of the absence of
one true God from their authority. And yet? They are in denial while declaring their critics Apostate liars.

The voice of the Critic is their only salvation. It is their wake up call.

2

The Snake and the Cult

by TerryWalstrom in

jw
friends

this is what happens in cults!all opposition is silenced, forbidden and punished.a cult never makes any true progress.they are rooted, fixed, immobile.watch a snake going from point a to point b.the snake never ever moves in a straight line.a snake curves to the left and curves back to the rightand yet it makes progress from point a to point b.. what is progress in society?moving forward, not backward.

right?improving your chances within an environment.achieve advantages, advancing all the while.okay?we can agree that progress is good.

but wait!.

TerryWalstrom

This is what happens in CULTS!
All opposition is silenced, forbidden and punished.
A Cult never makes any true progress.They are rooted, fixed, immobile.

Watch a snake going from point A to point B.
The snake never ever moves in a straight line.
A snake curves to the Left and curves back to the Right
and yet IT MAKES PROGRESS from point A to point B.

What is progress in Society?
Moving forward, not backward. Right?
Improving your chances within an environment.
Achieve advantages, advancing all the while.
Okay?
We can agree that PROGRESS is good. BUT WAIT!

Now, here is something to think about--really THINK about.

THIS IS HOW a healthy SOCIETY operates!
Just like snake moves.
Society oscillates from Liberal to Conservative, to Liberal to Conservative IN ORDER TO PROGRESS and improve and achieve worthwhile goals.

Stop and think!
Nature has always been at war with itself, survival of the fittest--and yet--life somehow achieves balance in the contest of opposition and adaptations.

Neither Liberal NOR Conservative is 100% correct all the time
and the function of democratic government is to force these two sides into DIALOGUE and COOPERATION in order to make PROGRESS.

Why?

Neither side knows for certain who is on the best track at any one moment in history.
Both sides NEED EACH OTHER to work that out.
Why? Because each extreme believes they are always right.

Whatever you believe--you automatically disbelieve those who disagree with your belief.
If you silence those who disagree with you--you are DOOMED as far as progress is concerned.

This is what happens in CULTS!
All opposition is silenced, forbidden and punished.

Sanity and Progress need healthy debate.
WE NEED our ideological "enemies" for a very good reason.

SOMETIMES our "enemy" is the one who is right for the moment.

When we ridicule, excoriate and condemn those who disagree with us (often for good reasons) we destroy PROGRESS by not listening, debating, and cooperating.

"Knowing" you are right and "they" are wrong--is suicidal for society.
Listen to your enemy for that one, tiny, TRUE thing they are saying. We need that one true thing if we are all to survive.

The path of the snake LOOKS CHAOTIC but it is not.
When you look at our Democracy it too looks chaotic but
it is the tug of war between the Left side and the Right side
carrying us forward toward Progress.

Freeing slaves, giving women the right to vote was progress.
Prohibition and the Iraq War were huge errors made by people who THOUGHT THEY WERE DOING THE RIGHT THING.
In the moment--somebody always thinks they are right.
Only by carefully listening to your "enemy" can you begin to achieve balance.

Democracy cannot become 2 wolves and a sheep voting on
"What's for supper?"
The sheep always loses.

ALLOW dissent.
Never silence those whose speech you hate.
Listen.
Don't be so damned certain you're right.
It is the only path to PROGRESS: working with your opposition.

49

My 71st Birthday Confessional

by TerryWalstrom in

jw
friends

i was born january 15, 1947in mt.

carmel hospital, detroit, michigan.. within six months of my birth, my mother would bundle her baby boy into a blanket and board an american airlines propeller-driven plane--in effect, leaving my father behind--to return to her hometown, ft. worth, texas.. my dad had an excellent job working for cadillac as an inspector.

it was a union job.

TerryWalstrom

Driveby, thanks for sharing that.
The number of "genuinely" creative people in the world is, I think, distorted by a cheapening of standards in popular opinion.
The less informed each generation becomes (by diluting exposure to classics) the less able society becomes to judge worthiness.

American Idol proved at least one thing in those endless auditions at the beginning of each season. Lots of people fool themselves and won't listen when confronted with their flaws.

Our lives can be stifled if we are Jehovah's Witnesses through constant exposure to unauthentic references. We become a storehouse of fictional observation and tastes.

I struggled with that for the first twenty years I was OUT of the Org.
I sought to redefine almost every concept and vocabulary word I possessed to purge the tainted brain repository.

I'm happy to hear you have achieved balance and joy in life.
An attitude of gratitude is hard to beat.

10

(Not?) Hypnotized

by TerryWalstrom in

jw
friends

what you are about to read i've never told anyone before.. why?

because it is mysterious.. mostly because it is a bit like the corner of your eye.

you see movement there but you won't be reciting any eye chart letters.what you read next is sort of like that.i don't like to be vague.

TerryWalstrom

Our senses are a window to our world. If the "glass is dirty" our view is distorted.
We've all heard something (or thought we heard) which turned out not to be accurate. We thought we saw, but it wasn't what we say we saw.

If our memory is an unreliable narrator our entire life is a series of ruined records. This I fear most as my oldest and dearest friends die off.
Comparing memories of events shared always served to sharpen verification.
So many times, people have asked me, "How in the world did you remember that?" The things I think I remember, once I remind the others involved, becomes veridical.

Alzheimer patients lose the life they lived--as far as corroborating incidents brought to mind--and the tragedy is experienced by their loved ones. However, most of my recollections don't amount to a handkerchief full of snot. Meaning: it doesn't matter to anybody else but me.

My writing these last few years has consisted of incremental recollections of events meaningful only to me. "Some" others find them interesting (they say) and I'm only too eager to share if it means I can exercise my mania for writing these details.

When Marcel Proust wrote REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST he set the literary world on fire. When I write, my equally mundane observations earn more shrugs than hugs.

I've wondered for years why in the world I wrote that incredibly wonky and weird book in such a manic flurry. That dream the other night is all I can say I've come up with that satisfies (barely) that curiosity.

I'll finish by saying how convinced I was that I saw a different ending to a NIGHT GALLERY episode "SILENT SNOW SECRET SNOW" than everyone else saw. I tried every way I could to prove an alternate ending was shown on TV. I was (and remain) shocked no such ending ever happened although it is vivid in memory.

This makes me question my own sanity. Of course, it's unimportant.
To everybody but me it is unimportant, I should say :)

10

(Not?) Hypnotized

by TerryWalstrom in

jw
friends

what you are about to read i've never told anyone before.. why?

because it is mysterious.. mostly because it is a bit like the corner of your eye.

you see movement there but you won't be reciting any eye chart letters.what you read next is sort of like that.i don't like to be vague.

TerryWalstrom

I tend to have an "opinion" on everything.
Not in this instance. Haven't got a clue.

I have spent the morning watching informative (?) videos about what hypnotism IS and ISN'T and I'm still in the dark.

As JW's you know we were told it is "binding others with a spell" and I completely reject superstitious drivel like that.

Supposedly, the more intelligent a person is the more susceptible to the hypnotic suggestion they become. I don't exactly see any inherent truth in that other than making you ashamed to NOT be hypnotized.

The more I think about it, the more convinced I am hypnosis is "something". Ha! Where does that get me?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnojE1R4jKw

10

(Not?) Hypnotized

by TerryWalstrom in

jw
friends

what you are about to read i've never told anyone before.. why?

because it is mysterious.. mostly because it is a bit like the corner of your eye.

you see movement there but you won't be reciting any eye chart letters.what you read next is sort of like that.i don't like to be vague.

TerryWalstrom

What you are about to read I've never told anyone before.

Why? Because it is mysterious.

Mostly because it is a bit like the corner of your eye.
You see movement there but you won't be reciting any Eye Chart letters.
What you read next is sort of like that.
I don't like to be vague. In fact, I tend to be overly fussy about details.
If you ask me about a movie I watched, you'll have to grab me and slap me to get me to shut up.
(Unless you just wanted to slap me in the first place.)
_____
It was around 1980.
My wife and I were at a party at her friend's house.
I didn't like those friends. Not at all!
To my way of thinking (I'm White trash raised) these were pretentious people, show-offs, lah-dee-dah.

They lived in a house in a part of town THEY referred to as (are you ready for this?) "Beverly Hills adjacent."
Yeah.
That's like my avatar photo on Facebook with me leaning on the hood of a Rolls Royce. A big joke!
I digress...
The Kellers were Hollywood connected because Anton had one job a year connected with the Academy Awards. He was the main Producer of the ceremonies. (According to him.)

(I did watch the credits at the end and he WAS a big deal in that regard.)
One job a year. Okaaay. Good for you.

The party was not filled with celebrities. No no no. Celebrities wouldn't be caught dead at the Keller's house. Only persons with rather tenuous connections (like me) were invited. My guess that's because Anton Keller would be the person with the most glamorous stories.

"So, Terry, when does this story begin?"
Okay. Okay. Right now.
______

The Kellers had invited a hypnotist to this party. Her name was Pat Collins. She was called the Hip Hypnotist. She had a nightclub on Sunset Strip where she told everybody she earned about four or five thousand dollars a week.
(How un-chic.)

Collins was Bimboesque in appearance. Not sexy. A wig and too much eye make up. That sort of thing. I was itching to get out of there because I DID NOT BELIEVE in hypnotism.

That's where I went wrong. I opened my big mouth. I said it out loud. (How un-chic.)

The word spread instantly like fire in the dead grass of the Hollywood Hills.

I was challenged, of course.
What follows is why I've never told this story.
I'm unsure of the details.
______

The next thing you know, I'm lying down on a couch. Every damn pair of non-celebrity eyes is on me like I'm a patient in a teaching facility about to have a frontal lobotomy.

Here is what I remember. Or at least what I THINK I remember...

I was asked to close my eyes and relax. (Oh brother.)
I was supposed to imagine a big red balloon with a string tied on to my wrist.

"When I start counting backward from 10, you will feel the balloon tugging on your wrist as it lifts up higher and higher into the air."

Okay, let's stop right here.
What I say next is what I THINK IS TRUE.
At that instant, as Pat Collins the Hip Hypnotist is counting backward, I get a weird idea in my head.

"Why don't I PRETEND to go along with this just for fun?"
_____
"10-9-8-7-6-5..."

I imagined myself as a Method Actor.
I contacted my "sense memory."
I "pretended" to lift my wrist and my arm ever-so-slo-w-ly.
For my audience of not-celebrities, this was amusing.

And at this moment, the "me" part of my memory switches off because--I think I fell asleep for a few seconds.

I opened my eyes suddenly.
I'm standing up.
Everybody in the room is applauding with huge smiles.

So, I took a lavish theatrical bow and remember thinking to myself, "These idiots are entertained by THAT??"

Here is where my story gets weird.
______

My wife started wanting to hypnotize me HERSELF.
She was an artist--not a hypnotist. No training.

It's like she once saw somebody performing brain surgery and thought to herself, "This looks like something I can do."

Stupid me. I went along with it.
At least, I "think" I went along with it.

I only vaguely remember she'd always begin with the stupid red balloon tied to my wrist thingy. Then rather prying, intimate questions were being asked and I'd "pretend" to fall asleep so I didn't have to answer.

Now--why am I telling you this?
It is because I just woke up this morning from a fresh dream.
Inside the dream, my wife was hypnotizing me and I heard her asking the following questions.

"What would you most like to achieve?"

"I want to be a writer."

"Describe that for me."

"I want to walk down the sidewalk and see a big bookstore with a window filled with stacks of my latest book and a giant photograph of me with the words, 'Book-signing today' and I'll walk inside to see a huge banner with the title of my Science Fiction book and lots of red balloons..."

I woke up very excited!
This morning I remember WHY I wrote and how I wrote
The Monorails of Mars.

I hypnotized myself.
I let a subterranean mental trance write the book.
(Yes, I know how incredibly stupid that sounds.)

Every day, week in and week out--for months. I'd close my eyes and imagine the bookstore window, the banner, and those red balloons and then---I'd begin to write and not stop writing for hours and hours.

When I came to the ending--I remember sobbing, crying, wiping tears away with a runny nose!
It was so profoundly traumatic!

I don't remember--REALLY--any part of writing that book until it was finished and I sighed heavily and told my friend, Quentin,
"This book just WROTE ITSELF."

______
When I started reading it, strange feelings began.
I had to stop.
To this day...
I confess...
I have NOT consciously read my own book.
Weird? Hell yes.
I have pulled little excerpts out of it and scanned the paragraphs for errors and such. Those parts I've read in a detached and clinical way.

But I want to give away the secret to the ending here and now.
The entire book was being written inside the head of another person NOT in the book who is himself a famous writer, dying in a hospital bed. All his characters come to visit him in his mind. These characters, over many years, have TOLD him their stories. He didn't 'make them up.'

That ending is a message to ME from my subconscious mind from all the parts of my life--telling me about my own life as an allegory.
As strange as it sounds...
Being a kid, reading Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.G. Wells, Ray Bradbury, joining a religious cult...it is all mixed into a hypnotic nightmare of what is straight out of my hypnotized mind and memories.

In other words, my Monorails of Mars is a book only meant for me to read---a message from my mind--for me alone.

I know it sounds idiotic.
However, at last, I think I can understand: me.
IF ONLY I could read my own book.

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